For the past 30 years, the field of technology design has been on an industry-wide march toward more seamless experiences, more delightful products, more leverage over the world around us. Look at our computers: beige and boxy desktop machines gave way to bright and colorful iMacs, which gave way to sleek and sexy laptops, which gave way to addictively touchable smartphones. It's hard not to look back at this timeline and see it as a great story of human progress; we have created a world where beautifully constructed tech is more powerful and more accessible than ever before. It is also more consistent. That's why all smartphones now look basically the same—gleaming black glass with handsomely cambered edges. Google, Apple, and Microsoft all use clean, sans-serif typefaces in their respective software. After years of experimentation, we have figured out what people like and settled on some rules. Today is an important and exciting moment in the design of our technologies. We have figured out the rules of creating sleek sophistication. We know, more or less, how to get it right. Now, we need a shift in perspective that allows us to move forward. Scott Dadich calls this shift “The Wrong Theory”, and in a fascinating and provocative presentation argues that the future of design is centered in making decisions counter to widely accepted convention.

In this presentation, Dadich discusses in detail the new discipline of “experience design.” We're entering a new era, one in which designers create experiences centering not only on physical objects but on the fabric of digital information that surrounds us. That's the next great challenge for design: weaving the threads of time, of technology, information, and access seamlessly and elegantly into our everyday lives. When a social network automatically checks us into a location, or cashiers can suggest new products based on our purchase history, or our connected TV calls up our favorite shows when we walk into the living room, it may seem like magic. But these are carefully designed experiences, they simply appear invisible.